The release of the Setting the Foundation marks the conclusion of the Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects grant project.

Interested in learning more about the project over the coming months?

Members of the project team will be reporting out on the results of this project at conferences such as the DLF Forum, the Library Assessment Conference, and the Grey Literature 20 Conference. An article summarizing the first part of the project titled “Barriers and Solutions to Assessing Digital Library Reuse: Preliminary Findings” is being published open access in Performance Measurement and Metrics. You may also contact any project team member to learn more about the background, results, and next steps for the project.

The release of this follow-up survey is the Measuring Reuse team’s final step in our needs gathering process. The survey consists of 14 questions. It asks participants to prioritize a set of use cases (generated from previously held focus group sessions) to identify the most useful functions of a digital library reuse assessment toolkit.

Members of the the Digital Library Federation Assessment Interest Group’s (DLF AIG) Working Group on Reuse and the Library Information Technology Association (LITA) Altmetrics and Digital Analytics Interest Group are excited to announce the upcoming “Analytics, Altmetrics, and Reuse Twitter Chat” on Wednesday, April 25 from 2:00 p.m EST to approximately 3:00 p.m. EST. The chat will engage participants in discussing the numerous approaches and barriers to reuse analysis in digital libraries.

Below you will find important information about the Twitter Chat, background content for participating in the conversation, and the questions to be explored during the chat.

Reuse: The DLF AIG Reuse Working Group defines reuse as how often and in what ways digital library materials are utilized and repurposed. In this definition, we do know the context of the use. This definition is fluid and open to change.

Examples of reuse: turning images into gifs or memes; inclusion of digital collection materials in an external dataset (e.g. HTRC datasets or curated Internet Archive user collections); mashups of two or more songs or video; data visualizations; other transformative applications of the collections external to digital collections systems

The project team is fresh off its first successful presentation at the 2017 DLF Forum in Pittsburgh. Genya O’Gara formally introduced our team and project during a session of the DLF Assessment Interest Group’s yearly accomplishments. Following the forum the project team convened our first in-person focus group. Eight individuals kindly shared their thoughts and perspectives on the complexities and challenges of understanding content reuse and the promising possibilities that reuse brings to digital cultural heritage assessment. On the heels of this first focus group was also the completion of our survey. We were delighted to receive over 200 responses (and were equally excited to provide $25 Amazon gift cards to the first 50 respondents). As the team continues to plan future focus groups, we will also be combing through the data and, with guiding insights from our Advisory Board, formulating initial results. This work will ultimately lead to a series of use cases and functional requirements for a future assessment toolkit.

The results of all of this analysis will be shared widely with the community. The earliest reveal of our analysis will be discussed at several upcoming conferences, including ALA Midwinter in Denver. The team will update you all on other presentations as they are confirmed.